Kenya’s Apollo Agriculture secures $40m Series B funding round for international expansion

Apollo Agriculture, a Kenyan startup that provides a commercial farming platform to help small-scale farmers maximize their profits, has raised a US$40 million Series B funding round to help it expand internationally and improve its product.

Apollo Agriculture, founded in 2019, enables farmers to increase their profitability by providing access to financing, high-quality farm inputs, insurance, and optimized advice.

The startup uses machine learning, remote sensing, and mobile payments to accurately underwrite farm credit risk, and it has built an automatically managed network of over 5,000 agents and nearly 1,000 retailers to provide last-mile delivery of farm inputs and services to small-scale farmers.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Yara Growth Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, CDC, and existing investors including Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, SBI, Breyer Capital, and TO Ventures Food have all contributed to its US$40 million Series B.

Apollo plans to use the funds to expand geographically, improve its products and technology, and continue to build its world-class team. The company has a strong team spread across Nairobi, Amsterdam, and remote offices, and it plans to grow its operations, software engineering, data science, and marketing teams over the next year.

“Apollo’s mission is to provide every farmer, everywhere, with the tools they need to farm profitably.” Rural communities are the backbone of society, but they have been largely ignored by most technology investors, especially in emerging markets,” said Eli Pollak, CEO and co-founder of Apollo Agriculture.

“We are incredibly proud to relentlessly focus on farmers and build products that have the potential to improve the lives of millions of people all over the world.” The investment by Softbank Vision Fund 2 is a powerful validation of Apollo’s business model and accelerates the rapid growth of our company and team.”

According to Alexia Yannopoulos, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, one of the most important challenges facing society is feeding the world.

“Apollo’s platform provides a one-stop shop solution to assist small-scale farmers in emerging regions in increasing crop and livestock outputs.” “Integrating valuable financial services such as credit, insurance, and advice into the supply chain is critical to supporting a more efficient and sustainable global food chain,” she said.